Boston Society of Architects Headquarters by Höweler + Yoon Architecture

The following text and images are courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture for their competition-winning design — Splipstream Public Exchange — of the Boston Society of Architects Headquarters. The 154-year-old organization will move from 52 Broad Street to Atlantic Wharf.

SLIPSTREAM maximizes the BSA’s engagement with a larger public by creating a series of interfaces, both physical and informational. The physical design of the new headquarters introduces a “cloud” ceiling that capitalizes on the viewing angles between the sidewalk and the second floor, to create a highly visible signature feature that doubles as gallery ceiling and supergraphic signage. The information interface utilizes wireless technologies to deliver site specific content to visitors, while also creating a BSA application for smart phones and location-aware hand held devices.

BROADCAST
Drawing the public up to the second floor, a grand stair drops down from the ceiling above, and provides a fluid transition between floors with a single gesture. The stair and ceiling form the primary figure of the physical interface. Information technologies are also embedded in the “cloud” ceiling, allowing its edge to broadcast messages through an LED sign band, while projectors display a digital wayfinding entrance mat, and wireless transmitters stream video feeds. “Public Exchange” consoles are located throughout the space, allowing the public to access curated information about the built environment, construction billings index figures, and databases of designers, products, and services.

PERIMETER
The contoured media surface wraps around the perimeter of the space, creating a continuous gallery and event circuit. Program areas are held back from the edge, allowing the public circulation to flow along the perimeter. The gallery program is conceived as a series of fluid paths and not as a discrete room. The content of the exhibitions produce the programmatic “current” to the flow of the gallery. Placing the gallery along the edge reinforces the cognitive parallax between the contents of the exhibitions in the foreground and the city in the background. This is consistent with the BSA’s core mission to support the active engagement between the process of design and the resulting product of the built environment.

PODS
Conference rooms are distributed within the free-flowing gallery zone. The conference rooms form an archipelago of program distributed within the flows of public gallery, maximizing the contact between the BSA members, visitors, stakeholders, and members of the general public.

SLIPSTREAM
The new BSA produces “Public Exchange” through its organizational and material logics, as well as through its network and media strategies. The fluid spaces of the linear gallery parallel the constant streams of broadcast information. The archipelago of programs and exhibitions will create a smooth mixture of audiences and content within the flows and eddies of the BSA’s slipstream configuration, resulting in the productive discourse that is BSA’s mission.

Design Team:
Höweler + Yoon Architecture: J. Meejin Yoon, Eric Höweler (Principals in Charge), Ryan Murphy, Parker Lee, Liu Xi, Thena Tak, Cyrus Dochow.
Structural Engineer: ARUP
MEP Engineer: AHA Consultants

Hat tip to A Daily Dose of Architecture

Choi+Shine wins BSA Unbuilt Architecture Award for Land of Giants

Brookline, MA-based Jin Choi & Thomas Shine of Choi+Shine recently received the 2010 Boston Society of Architects Unbuilt Architecture Award for their “Land of Giants” project. The project was originally submitted for an Icelandic pylon competition, where it received an honorable mention.   The competition was to find a new typology for Iceland’s high voltage power lines and pylons.

This design transforms mundane electrical pylons into statues on the Icelandic landscape by making only small alterations to existing pylon design.

Making only minor alterations to well established steel-framed tower design, we have created a series of towers that are powerful, solemn and variable. These iconic pylon-figures will become monuments in the landscape. Seeing the pylon-figures will become an unforgettable experience, elevating the towers to something more than merely a functional design of necessity.

The pylon-figures can be configured to respond to their environment with appropriate gestures. As the carried electrical lines ascend a hill, the pylon-figures change posture, imitating a climbing person. Over long spans, the pylon-figure stretches to gain increased height, crouches for increased strength or strains under the weight of the wires.

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Boston’s KidsBuild is May 29 and 30

From the BSA Currents online Newsletter, May 21, 2009 – Bring your children on May 29 and 30 to learn about architecture and design from the ground up at KidsBuild! Adults and children ages six and older will design the building of their dreams and see a city come to life at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston). Friday, May 29 is reserved for school and community groups and ICA members from 3:00 to 7:00 pm. On Saturday, May 30, the public is welcome to participate from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. The activity takes approximately two hours. Pre-registration is required.

For more information, visit KidsBuild.